How difficult is going straight to HF from undergrad?

I have a friend who went from a semi-target to a really good HF (think Citadel, Two Sigma, etc), and I was wondering how difficult that is? From what I know, he was the only student in school history to do this. Is he just a genius or something or am I missing something?

8 Comments
 

Pretty vague question given Citadel Associate Programme and Quant dev or whatever at 2 sigma are basically different industries.

For Long/Short the odds are pretty low, but it's a bit easier than people realise, imo. If you "spec" into it and commit to learning for the sake of learning about it you can do much better than most in the interviews.

 

bad examples, I was tryna be vague because if I said the actual name I felt it would be pretty easy to pinpoint who I'm talking, but i was more focused on the actual prestige of those companies (he doesn't work at either of those)

 

These firms are generally more meritocratic than banking/PE, pedigree will still matter and particularly for some firms/programs more than others. 

 
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